


Black Paladin Week

by kitsune13tamlin



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Kuron (Voltron)-centric, Operation Kuron (Voltron), Shiro (Voltron)-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 05:38:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13311651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsune13tamlin/pseuds/kitsune13tamlin
Summary: I am slow at updates but over on tumblr there was a Shiro-week (check the tag blackpaladinweek for all kinds of Shiro goodness) a while back that I participated in and this is the collection of those short stories.  Each day had a different subject and each chapter is the story for the new subject.  Chapter title is the day's subject of choice.  Seven short Shiro stories simultaneously!





	1. Space

He’s seven.

The stars are calling him. They dance like music for his eyes. He knows he is supposed to be in bed, that he’s supposed to be sleeping like the good boy his mother reaffirmed he was as she tucked him into bed and smoothed back his hair and kissed his forehead. He likes being a good boy. He likes making his mama happy and proud of him. But…

the stars are calling him. And finally, after what seems like a fight with himself of hours but was probably only a minute tops, he slips out from under the cover, small bare feet immediately cold as they drop to the tatami mat and he pads, as quietly as a seven year old who’s used to behaving can, over to the window.

They’re staying at his grandfather’s house. It’s a good house and an old one and there are lots of corners to explore and places to hide in and around it. But, more importantly Shiro has suddenly realized, his grandfather’s house is far from the city and - he has never seen so many stars in all his life, not even if he put them all together from every previous night he’s sure. He wants to go outside, wants to let his eyes hear them better - but its cold and he knows that slipping out of the house is so much badder than just slipping out of bed. So he stays in his room but he crawls up onto the chest that’s pushed under the window and he curls his legs up and wraps his arms around them and leans. The glass of the window is cold against his thin body but - it seems to fit the way the stars sound in his eyes. As if only something cold could look so sharp and hard and beautiful. He stays up all night long, wide eyed watching the stars. Or perhaps he stays up a full half hour at least before sleep wins after his exciting day of discoveries. He wakes up warm and tucked back into his bed in the morning and for a second he thinks maybe he made the stars up in his head. Because his mother doesn’t scold him when he comes down for breakfast but, at the wise old age of seven, he knows he didn’t get back in his bed by himself. No one says anything though, the way they would have if they’d caught him out of bed past bedtime. So maybe the stars were a fairy tale, like kitsune and kappa, and when he thinks it, he feels as if he’s lost something except he can’t explain what it is.

Later that day however, his grandfather calls him into his study and Takashi creeps carefully in, because its the one room in the entire house he’s not allowed to go into without an adult. Except his grandfather is standing next to a metal triangle almost as tall as he is and there’s a stool next to it. His grandfather doesn’t smile, because his grandfather never smiles, but he gestures Takashi over and onto the stool and puts Takashi’s very small hands on the cold metal with his larger colder ones over them and that is how Takashi is introduced to telescopes.

He receives a new one every year for his birthday, each one more sophisticated and more capable than the last, like clockwork without fail, until the last year of his grandfather’s life, the year before Takashi is accepted into the Galaxy Garrison. But by then they’ve already done their job.

Takashi Shirogane is in love with the stars. And one day, he promises, he will get close enough to hear them with his ears as well as his eyes.


	2. Origonal

“No way. You’re not serious. …. You’re serious?! That’s - Shiro, that’s Kerberos! That’s - the mission to end all missions. An assignment like that? - that’s for top of the roister. Newley or Mikhaylovich or Matta’ll grab that spot up. They’ve got seniority and a hell of a lot more missions logged. I mean - yeah. You’re Io’s hero and all but - Kerberos is for the top tier. No offense! We’re just too young. We’ll get our chance. Somewhere even better than Kerberos.” The pat on his shoulder was meant to be consoling. “Give us ten years and you’ll see!”

Except Shiro didn’t need consolation. 

Because he was going to Kerberos.

Brin wasn’t wrong. The list of potential pilots for the Kerberos mission was very small and it read like the Garrison’s Who’s Who list, all top level names of pilots that had proven themselves time and time again. Gehrig - first astronaut to Europa. Larson - first to navigate Saturn’s rings. Newley - hero of the failed Venus mission. Kerberos’ pilot was going to be what the mission hung on. It wasn’t the piloting itself. It was never the piloting itself. It was the ability, in that desperate moment when, against all hope and prayer, something went wrong, to keep a level head and turn a potential disaster into a miracle. That was what would make or break a pilot’s career. It was about so much more than simply steering a ship, pointing it in a direction and making it fly there against solar wind and space debris and gravitational pulls. That part did take skill and Shiro knew he had that kind of skill in spades. That wasn’t bragging. It was just proven fact. But being the pilot of a mission was more. It was about knowing how much fuel there was left in each of the separate tanks at any given moment and how the weight of it would effect the spin of the ship when something knocked it off course and how to use that to right it and set it back on course, all mathematically and instantaneously in your head in case the ships’s computers had been knocked out. It was about knowing instinctively when the ship’s vibrations were off, long before any alarms sounded or lights flickered. It was about being the difference between an empty death lost in space and spinning out of the solar system on the eternal way to Proxima Centauri as lost astronauts and a successful mission. It was that split second of knowing your ship so well you knew when something went wrong and having the level head and knowledge to set it right before anyone else even noticed. The pilot of the mission to Kerberos would carry the full weight of the success - or the failure - of it on his or her shoulders.

Deep space pilots were so much more than just the person that held the stick and pushed the buttons at the right time. It was why they still called them ‘fighter class’ even though there were no wars in space to be fought. A throw back to older, riding the hair’s difference of a trigger time. 

Kerberos already had a big name attached to it. Commander Samuel Holt. The top of his field and a lifetime of space experience under his belt. A man Shiro personally looked up to and admired for his steady wisdom and positive outlook on even the darkest situations. The Garrison would select a pilot that could match him. And that was a lot of experience to have to match up to.

Shiro stood in front of potential pilot roster list that was posted on the break room wall and he read the names of people he considered his own personal heroes that had already signed up for trials for the pilot spot for Kerberos. It made his mouth go dry. If he wanted the pilot’s slot, he was going to be competing with the best the Garrison has ever put out and none of them, not the more experience pilots, not Shiro, were going to hold back during the trials.

Maybe he was Icarus. The thought, not for the first time, whispered to the back of his mind. Too young to realize there was a limit to how high he could fly.

Maybe he should take Brin’s advice and wait his turn. There would be other missions. There would be other flights. He was young. He still had plenty of time.

The stars weren’t going anywhere. They’d wait for him.

That night, sitting at his desk with just the glow from his computer screen against his face and the warmer, gold glow of a single lamp his roommate had left on on her way out at his back, Shiro hesitated - and then clicked the send key that submitted his own application to the Kerberos roister.

The stars were calling for him. And Kerberos was closer to them than anyone has ever been able to come until now. Shiro would keep flying until his wings melted out from under him. He didn’t know any other way.


	3. Break

Everything here reeks.

Space has always had a smell, no matter what they tell you. Being crammed in a tin can for extended amounts of time in close quarters with limited waste disposal creates a soup of scents that shift each time someone moves. It had been the part of space travel that Shiro had been least prepared for, that had taken his mind the most adjustment. Because, mentally, space was supposed to smell like - stars. Which he had always dreamed would smell a little like ice.

Space might. But space ships don’t.

He lays curled in his corner, just trying to breath. The cracked rib doesn’t help with that but - he’s so sick of the smells. Sick to death of them and he wishes he was nose blind or that he could at least adjust to them enough that his nose would stop pointing every new whiff of putrid rot and body waste and fear to him each time someone in the cell shifted. He knows though. He knows it won’t. He understands, with the front of his head, that its a survival trait. That his body knows his life is in danger and its trying to keep him alive by feeding him all the information it can. Hearing is heightened, sight - especially peripheral - is almost maddeningly sharp and even his sense of touch is too acute, too aware of each cold, wet place the fabric of his clothing presses against his skin, of each grain of sand, each irregularity in the floor he’s lying on is. But the smell - he thinks he will go mad from the smell. The smells. How long does he have to be here before his sensory input finally burns itself out and gives him some peace? How long before this becomes the norm and his body stops screaming every new piece of information at him? He knows its a bad way to think. That he shouldn’t want - this - to become his new normal.

But he would give almost anything for some simple, uninterrupted God damn sleep.

Even the - his mind shies away from calling where they take them to repair their bodies a ‘clinic’, refuses to think of the butchers that do the work on them as ‘doctors’. There is no healing or helping that goes on there, even if they forced torn parts back together and wrench broken things back into place. But he would almost be eager to endure that torture if only the small rooms would smell sterile. Shiro would give much to just once smell the sharp order of cleaning fluids, of disinfectant. But even in the - rooms there was no escaping the smell of captivity. The rooms smelled like old clotted blood, like rotting limbs, like pus and piss and offal and broken organs. The rooms smelled like burned flesh and burned hair. And, once in a while, they smelled like ozone. The rooms were always clear, always clean looking, but it was only thin ice over a deep pond full of rotten dead. However they cleaned away the leftovers after each surgery, the smell always lingered to remind the next person dragged in exactly what the rooms were used for. Only the ozone was any relief, because it always cut through every other smell, too sharp and astringent to be ignored. But he couldn’t enjoy that brief break. Because the ozone meant pain, the ozone meant terror. The ozone meant - her.

He turned his head, buried his nose against his elbow, inhaled his own stale, rank odor and at least it was his.

The only time the smell wasn’t overwhelming, the only time he had any relief from it at all, was in the Arena. The sand soaked up blood and bile, the place was open enough that the air had room to dilute the smells. Even down in the belly of it, safely away from the watchers above, there was a mild air flow. Shiro hated the Arena. He hated what he did in the Arena. And yet, each time he stepped through the gate into it, for just a moment, he loved it. Because, in that moment, he was free of the screaming obsession of his body with scents. He breathed thickly through his sleeve, almost suffocating but resisting raising his head, knowing it would just be a new assault of the smell of trapped beasts, himself amoung them. Sometimes… in the Arena… when the air was almost clean…

Shiro hated the little creatures they sent out to fight him that pissed themselves in terror and fouled it almost more than he hated the monsters that screamed their rage and charged at him.


	4. Black Bayard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> takes place between the fics Shadow and Anathema

He stares at the weapon in his hand. It looks sleek, elegant. Innocuous. An elegant weapon for a more civilized age, his mind tells him and its almost funny. Almost.

He remembers snatching it from Zarkon’s hand, that moment in time when he was right where the universe wanted him to be and everything belonged. How he and Black had been one mind. One heart. The memory was muddled though, faint and while he could remember it - he couldn’t feel it anymore. The jolt, the surprise, the swell of completeness. He could remember feeling them but he couldn’t feel the memory.

And then he’d disappeared. Cast off again. Maybe? Captured by the Galra certainly. Keith had taken the bayard. The way he’d taken the Black Lion. The way Shiro had wanted him to.

…must have wanted him to…

Except now Keith was gone, off with the Blades and Shiro feels…. he feels as if that should bother him more than it does. It does bother him. He just - he feels as if it should bother him more. As if he’s missing something that deeply matters, something important. He just can’t seem to put his finger on what it is. Why it is.

He turns the bayard in his hand, watches it catch the light, beautiful and dead. He hasn’t used it yet. Hasn’t needed to. The trade off, Keith’s leaving, was so jarring that the bayard, and what it meant, were almost a side issue. Almost forgotten. Except he’d caught the princess looking at him during a training session and - maybe he just imagined that she was waiting for him to use the bayard. 

He - doesn’t want to. 

He doesn’t know why but - he doesn’t want to. 

Except he has to. Because he’s the Black Paladin. Now. Again. And his team needs him to be completely functional.

Even if he didn’t feel functional. Even if everything still seemed half a step off, the gravity half a gal too light, the ground not as reliable under his falling steps as he’d like. He can work with it, work around it, adjust, hide it - but he needs to be more and that means mastering the bayard. Black’s bayard. And he still doesn’t know, because Black is silent, why the lion refused him for so long after his return or why it doesn’t speak to him the way it used to.

If it really did send him away and into Galra hands…

He needs to master the bayard. So, alone in the training room, sure that the observation screens have been blacked out, he activates it, sending his will, his determination - who he is - coursing through it the same way he connects with Black.

It flares

and he’s holding a Galra’s crooked sword, the exact one he used in the Arena, in his hand.

He drops it -

and wakes up with a gasp, sitting up in bed, sweat cold on his skin, breathing hard.

A dream. It was just a dream. 

He can still feel the weight of the sword, the rough surface of its hilt, against his palm.

Sitting forward, he hunches over his knees. Breathes through his teeth and then, eventually, his nose, until his heart rate settles. He’s being stupid. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Each of the paladins has the weapon best suited to them. Whatever the Black Bayard becomes, it will be something that fits with him. He makes it a mantra, telling it to himself over and over again and by the time morning comes and he drags himself to the bathroom to wash up for the day, he tells himself he’s convinced.

There’s nothing to be afraid of.

And yet - the black bayard stays sheathed in the hip of his armor when they go on their next mission.

Next time. He’ll use it - next time.


	5. Companion

Nights were always the worst.

Not that space has ‘nights’ to speak of but planet born creatures had sleep cycles in their blood and so ‘night’ came to the Castle even thrumming through the eternal dark of space.

And Shiro was left on his own.

Sometimes he slept. He’d given up pretending he could on the bed, moved a blanket and pillow to the closet and - sometimes - he slept better in there. Closed in and surrounded by walls, the small space felt - safe. He was pretty sure it shouldn’t but - he couldn’t fight what he’d been made into all the time. He had to sleep sometime. And the closet was the only place he could.

When he could - he slept. But often he couldn’t sleep. It left him at loose ends, something his nature rebelled at - but something his in need of distraction mind also tried to avoid. He didn’t do well with nothing to do. He never had but now it felt -

it was too easy to lose himself in the emptiness inside his head, where an entire year of memories wasn’t. To easy to listen to the voices whispering that he wasn’t real, that he’d never really escaped, that it was only a matter of time before someone realized it and called him out.

It didn’t have to make sense. It still had a way of wiggling down through his spine and lodging.

So nights were spent exercising. Training. Sitting with Black. Watching the stars go by from the helm or the observation room. Trying to learn to read Altean. Galra. Trying to stay busy in the empty silence while his team slept, safe and protected under his watch.

Some nights it was harder than others to find distraction.

“Mm?” he looked down at the squeak near his boot, pulling himself out of an almost subconscious and fruitless search for constellations he recognized in the star charts spread out on the table in front of him. Saw one of the mice… Chuchule maybe? He didn’t have them memorized yet. They were Allura’s mice. Pidge’s companions. Sometimes they shadowed Hunk in the kitchen. But Shiro - there wasn’t a lot of room for small alien rodents in his routines. But there was a mouse now, looking expectantly up at him and even though he knew they were capable, he lowered a hand to offer a lift to the table. It just seemed polite. The mouse, Chuchule, he was pretty sure, scrambled onboard, unphased by the fact it was a metal hand and not a normal one and just as he was lifting, there was a mad scramble and suddenly he had a full handful of mice and one running up his shirt sleeve. It - was weird but pretty endearing and he smiled as he lifted them all onto the table in front of him, careful to set them where the star map wouldn’t slide under their small feet. The one on his shoulder - Plachu possibly? - didn’t scamper down but remained and Shiro felt the brush of long whiskers against his cheek as it seemed intent on settling in. They didn’t often interact with him.

“What is it? Is everything all right? Is something wrong with the princess?”

They weren’t acting alarmed but - why else would they have all showed up at the same time for his attention. But - no. From the miming, nothing was wrong. Everyone was still sleeping, or at least Allura was if the little mimicked snores were any indication. It made him smile again, watching Platt’s - he was pretty sure it was Platt - round belly rising and falling with the snores.

He resisted the urge to nudge it with a finger.

“You want food then?” Because that seemed sensible but no. Even if Platt looked like he might have been tempted to agree, the other mice made it clear this wasn’t a matter of food.

“All right. What do you need then?”

That answer took a great deal longer. Shiro didn’t have the ‘mice’ skill that the women on the ship seemed to and there were quite a few false starts and mistakes on his part as he tried to work out what complex thing they were miming to him in answer. Still, all those road trip games with Allura that Hunk had taught them seemed to have paid off because it was only ten or fifteen minutes later when Shiro finally pieced together:

“You want to put on another show for the princess but you want to practice it on me first?”

It had been a long time since he’d felt as proud of affirmation at his efforts as he did when the mice responded to the happy positive and he was sure that said something about him. It still left a warm glow in his chest though and he was too wise to ignore that based on whether he thought it had merit or not.

“Okay,” he nodded. “Show me how I can help.”

The next week and a half wasn’t so empty. The routine the mice were working on was pretty complex and there were a lot of kinks to iron out of it. Apparently at least. Shiro mostly got to watch and provide the hands needed for certain tricks while the mice hashed it out in detail amoung themselves. He enjoyed it though. Their little cold feet were actually very comforting as they ran up and down and across him and listening to them squeak made the world very small and safe and full of warmth. Eventually they got it worked out however and he was willing to admit he was sorry about it. Not that he wanted to hold them back. He’d just - miss the company.

Two nights later they were back however, new routine in need of practice, his hands and attention required while they worked away in secret on their next surprise for the princess. Shiro felt included and it was a strange feeling. It wasn’t as a member of the team or Voltron or even friendship. It was just something he couldn’t define but felt inclusive and whole. 

It was during the third round of practice for a new routine that he finally mentioned it in passing to Allura. Some casual comment that slipped out because he wanted to hear her praise their efforts - their efforts because he was starting to feel as if he was included in their routines as well even if he never got to be there when they entertained Allura with them and he hoped to hear how much she’d enjoyed the mice and the hard work they’d put in -

except she only gave him a puzzled smile and asked what he was on about. The mice only did routines when the lack of missions gave her too much downtime and that certainly hadn’t been recently.

That night, as Chulatt clambered up his arm to swing from his thumb, Shiro offered Platt the cookie he’d snuck from dinner for him and then looked at Chuchule. And he smiled.

“I think I’ve got an idea for your next routine…”

Nights were always the worst. But - sometimes - the smallest distractions could fill up an entire empty night with their scurrying feet across him and their cheerful chatter.

It made the days easier to tackle too.


	6. Duty/Choice

It’s not words.

Its a blast of furnace hot air against his face. There’s sand and grit in it and it pits his skin where its exposed, blows his hair back from his forehead in almost a painful pull. He slits his eyes against it, feels the sand, somehow, make it past his lips and coat his teeth. The scar over his nose hurts, raw feeling from the abrasion. Everything falls then, the silence, the sand out of the air, the heat, he can almost feel the weight of it all drop in front of him. He rubs a hand over his lips and his fingers come away red. Like old blood. Like rust. He lifts his head to the presence he can feel just on the edge of his senses and tries to think of a question. 

Before he can, it answers him again and the scouring sand and hot wind hollow out his lungs until he can’t breathe anymore.

He wakes up.

Shiro isn’t good at remembering dreams. He’s never really been, too much each morning already piling up for his attention for his brain to waste time catching at half-wisps of subconscious dreams. He forgets the furnace blast of wind before he’s even finished pushing himself up off the floor where he sleeps in the closet and stretching.

But he scrubs his teeth longer than usual that morning and takes longer in the shower, letting the water drum against the raised, slick skin over his nose.

A month later the voice is back.

There are still no words. This time there’s no blast of heat. Instead there’s a tumalt, a rushing, roaring build up that swirls around him. He can taste brine and engine oil in the wind that buffets him. Water pits his face just as hard as the sand once had, harder, but its cold, bits of diamond frozen ice. His nostrils hurt. His ears hurt. His lips go numb. He doesn’t understand what its saying and the curl of this wind, so much more sensuous than the furnace of before, curls up the back of his neck, slides down his shirt collar, makes him jerk at the invading cold. He opens his mouth to gasp, knows he needs to ask a question but he can’t think of one

and the ocean turns upside down and crashes down on him, forcing its way down his throat and his ears and his nose, intent on making him understand.

He wakes up choking, coughing, rolls on his side and heaves, shuddering. Lays there with his head pressed against the blanket and the cold of the floor, hard and solid and unmoving and tries to remember what woke him up. Catches a glimpse of drowning and something he was supposed to do and hadn’t and can’t remember anything else.

It’s a few days before he’s comfortable in the shower and longer before he forgets enough to raise his face to the shower head to rinse it.

The third time, he’s almost ready. He almost remembers the previous times. It’s still not enough.

This time the blast of wind is hot and wet and reminds him of a wild animal’s breath. There’s dark still water and swamp in the blast and it sets the hair on his arms rising, the animal inside him knowing it needs to run, to find open spaces, that staying in the suffocating tangle is death. He can sense the being looming over him, like a mountain, too huge and vast and it shouldn’t be able to see something as small and insignificant as he is but it does. He tries to brace his feet for the second roar, the one he knows is coming in the sudden humid stillness but the blast of it still overwhelms him and fetid air pours down into his lungs, too full of green and rot, choking him on the overwhelming intensity of the rush.

He avoids the food goo after that, the algae taste of it too close to what he almost remembers to want it in is mouth, slipping down his throat.

The fourth time he recognizes, as it happens, what’s happening, remembers the time before and the time before with vague echoes. And he remembers that he’s supposed to ask a question. Except the wind that rolls over him is heavy and it rolls. Like a sandstorm, like a bulldozer, it plows forward instead of blasting and it weighs him down. Egyptian tombs and the weight of centuries and dust from when time was already old. He can feel it stretching him thin, pressed between eternal gravity wells. It drags the air from his lungs - and keeps dragging it long after he thinks there’s nothing left to take, inexorable. He jerks away, rolling into the wall and banging his head and he remembers thinking ‘not fair!’.

Because there had been no pause, no break in assaults, only the slow steady grind downward forever.

He scrabbles then, for a PAD, manages to type something in so that he’ll remember the rest when he wakes up again - but the next morning the only thing on the tablet are the words:

Ask your question

And he doesn’t remember what they mean.

He doesn’t remember what they mean until a couple of weeks later, when he’s fallen asleep in the pilot’s seat of the Black Lion, too exhausted to bother get up and stumble all the way back to his room and he’s used to sleeping upright in a seat because Kerberos -

he’s asleep before the thought even finishes but he’s still drifting, weightless and the sky is alive with singing stars and swirling gas clouds and sparking debris. He’s falling, except you don’t fall down in space - you fall out and you fall forever. Because there’s no one to catch you, no one to hear the way your breathing goes thin inside your helmet, nothing between you and dark eternity and maybe, one day, the husk of you will be swallowed up a star or burn up in an atmosphere but most likely it will just fall until time itself ends. Except he senses the presence, vast as the entire star filled sky as it hones in on him and it might as well be a black hole or an exploding star because the fierceness of it is so strong even from a distance he knows it will swallow him whole. Crush him, freeze him, tear him molecule from molecule perhaps - but it will be the end of Takashi Shirogane. And its instinctive defense when he yells his question, built up from past times he only vaguely remembers now, in the dream.

Ask your question

“What do you want?”

The moment the words are out of his mouth, ringing in his ears, hollow, fogging the glass of his helmet, the looming, incoming eternal stops. It’s not an answer though and he remembers enough, as he dreams, to know if he doesn’t find a way to make it stop he will keep dreaming deaths.

“Tell me what you want from me!”

It has to be something. They wouldn’t, these giant star dwarfing beings, showing up, keep killing him, if they didn’t want something from him in return. And even as he thinks it, suddenly, they’re all there. Ringing around him like planets around a star, hemming him in. And he’s so, so very tired of being hurt.

“Tell me what I have to do - “ Something foul and familiar in his mouth. Something from a lost year he doesn’t remember. Something he knows will stop the pain.

The answer comes then and it comes in a burst of thought that’s too complex for his mind to wrap around, too vast and webbed and other. But he catches the hinge of it. His part in it.

and its all he can do to keep from screaming.

Him. They want him. They want him to swallow them all. To let all of them, in all their cell tearing power, into him. He has to accept all of them, in their overwhelming, mind-rending nature, inside himself.

Or he will never be a complete leader.

He floats, breathing through his mouth, mind wanting to crack and run mad. He can’t. He can’t hold all of them inside of himself. They’re too big, they’re too much, they’re - none of them - suited to him. He is not fire, wood, earth or water. His body, his mind, will never hold together against that kind of elemental power.

He may lead them - but he will never be completely their leader unless he accepts all of them in.

Shiro knows he can lead. He knows he can lead well.

But he will never forgive himself if he doesn’t do everything in his power to be the best leader for his team that he can.

The thought of the pain, of dying, makes him hesitate - and then he agrees.

They pour into him like a man trying to swallow the entire storm ripped ocean, like lava and rock and furnace heat down his throat, like the weight of ages pouring eternal sand down into his lungs, like too much rot and growing life swelling inside his stomach. He tries to scream but his body is full of other things and there’s nothing left of himself to come out.

And then the last one falls and it wraps completely around him and settles like a liquid skin over his own and it begins to constrict. He writhes as it forces its way down, millimeter by millimeter through his skin, down into his muscle, down to the core of his bones, animal sounds tearing loose from his throat. His body twists in the weightless, airless eternal and its not him that moves it, hands in claws, back bowed. The pain is like nothing he’s ever known before and his mind scrambles, trying to get away and unable to. And then, slowly, he realizes that the pain is fading. And, even slower, he realizes that the isn’t drowning, isn’t suffocating, isn’t swelling, isn’t burning. They’re still there. He can feel them inside, compressed and locked away. All that remains is the last element though. Belatedly he remembers. Metal. The last element is metal…

It settles under his skin, coats his bones, shores a core of pure iron around his chest. His heart. He can hold the other elements now. Live with them inside of him without being torn apart. Because the metal holds him close, keeps him together, gives him the shield and the protection against being overwhelmed.

And, in his dream, he knows. He knows the name of that Metal.

Black…

He wakes up aching and groans, rubbing at his face, surprised to find dried sweat on his skin. He should know better than to fall asleep in a chair. It always ends up wrecking havoc with his muscles. There’s the whisper of a dream somewhere in the back of his head, the faint taste of metal on his tongue and he frowns, trying to remember. It slips away from him though and he’s left rubbing his chest where it aches.

“Shiro,” its his comm and the princess’ face shows up on his screen. He wonders if he looks as much a mess as he feels but she’s a diplomat and he can’t tell by her face. She looks apologetic for interrupting him but - he offers a nod to show its all right, that he’s listening and she nods, just once, back.

“Thank you. Can you come to the bridge please. Coran’s found new information and I think we should discuss strategy.”

“I’ll be right there,” he pushes himself out of his seat with hardly a wince and heads for the door. And stops. Just for a moment. Turns to look back at the empty cockpit of the lion. There’s something…. something that happened. Something he’s sure he should remember. 

Except he remembers falling asleep and waking up and he didn’t miss anything in between. He still finds himself reaching up, resting a hand on the ceiling for a moment and murmuring:

“thanks…”

before turning and heading out of the lion and the hanger. Whatever it takes to be the leader his team needs, he’ll pay it. There’s was never really any choice for someone like him.


	7. AU

“I need an in, Black.”

He says it low, under his breath and less than a tic later the data is streaming across his vision. He watches it, crouched low and hidden behind the corroded air unit that’s wheezing and clunking along, trying to make something breathable out of the thick miasma that hangs low tonight. Routes highlight, past the guards, the scan units, past the bio-readers. His eyes narrow and, for just a second, he lets himself tune out his surroundings and only see the glowing purple lines of neon across his sight. Searching, searching - there!

He’s moving in the next second. Off the roof and falling. The buildings are pillars and the spaces between them are canyons, the ground so far below that some people live their whole lives without seeing it. The wind screams past him as his weight carries him down, countdown silently screaming in his head until the light in the corner of his vision goes from an increasingly fast blink to a steady flare. His arm shoots out, wires from his fingertips that catch the edge of a towering neon advertisement and his momentum from the way the wire catches and swings him takes him to the side of the building. His other hand shoots out, catches a slender lip where the building divides floors. The tension screams down through the muscles of his shoulder and across his back but he’s done so much worse and a second later he’s hauling himself up, using the surface of the building that decades of pollution have pitted to climb his way back up the short distance to the service door he’d been directed to. It’s raining, as much as the sludge that falls from the sky can be called rain, oily and viscous. It coats everything, making the climb harder but its also an advantage tonight because it coats the bio-scanner and he can pull off his glove and hold up his palm in front of it and be mistaken for one of the returning security drones when it manages only a partial read through the sludge across its lens. Scanning the metal reading of his palm that scans as ‘Galra Tech Inc’ and doesn’t manage the details that its a stolen piece of tech.

Shiro is a stolen piece of Galra tech.

The door slides open and he’s inside, controlled fall down the shoot and the purple lines trace over everything to direct him. He’s going in hard and fast and its not a smart move at all. But they have something he wants and this may be his only shot at it. The transport needs to refuel in this section of town and once its done, its clearance will get it on transport lanes that even Shiro can’t reach.

So he’s not going to give it time to finish refueling.

The purple line goes solid and he uses his metal hand to drive it into the wall to stop himself, feet spread as the soles of his heavy boots catch and brace him. The heat of his Galra hand makes short work of the emergency repair door that opens up a more human sized tube and he’s in and down the ladder without hesitation.

“Jeff and the others are in place,” a voice in his earpiece. “Count down starts now.”

“Thanks, Leese.”

“Clear skies, Takashi.”

Leftovers. Back before Galra Tech, back before the takeover. Back when there was still a space program and hope. Back before his world went to hell and he’d still been a rising star at what had once been the Galaxy Garrison.

“Clear skies,” he promises back. Because you could manage a hostile corporate takeover of the Garrison - but you could never really make it go away. Just drive it underground. At the edge of his vision a timer begins a count down. He hits the end of the ladder and the maintenance ducts that connected most of the building and takes the branch that the purple light indicated at a run. The same program that gives him the advanced vision pours extra adrenaline into his muscles, giving him speed and stamina. And still the purple trail lead him onward, automatically sending out static to scramble the internal monitors the building has as passive defense as he runs. Black can give him that. Black can give him a great deal. But in the end he has to carry the mission. He skids to a stop at the indicated door and asks without words this time:

‘how many?’

Purple points of light show up against the wall, indicators of what is on the other side. And beyond those…

beyond those is a golden box that makes his heart wrench in his chest and threatens to unsteady his breathing.

The numbers in the corner of his vision beat down like fast running water. Shiro puts his hand against the release on the door and waits. One heart beat. Two.

And outside the world explodes.

He isn’t physically aware of it. There’s no interior indication but the counter hits its limit and he knows his friends. He knows Jeff in particular. Things were definitely exploding outside. The release swivels for him and the door blasts off its hinges thanks to a little help from Shiro. He’s out and rolling before the heavy metal weight of the door has even finished crashing into the wall and the two soldiers that had had the misfortune to be standing in its path. 

Then its a simple matter of take down. The metal beads fly from Shiro’s human hand and his Galra one jolts the electric webbing between them to life, a seconds flick of his fingers before he’s down on a knee, slamming his metal palm into the floor and sending electric shooting in a great booming wave across it, flipping guards off their feet and into the air, convulsing before they’ve even landed again. In Shiro’s head a timer keeps counting down and he’s on his feet and sprinting forward before the enemy has even finished crashing back down onto the floor. Artificial energy pours into his muscles and nerves, setting them on fire and he’s airborn, flipping himself up, off a wall for momentum, coming down hard on an overhead walkway. Energy shots rain down, soldiers and drones and he moves, blurring the line between sight and sound, using the environment, the walls as useful to him as the floor. His glowing Galra hand bleeds a line that echoes in the eyesight after its passed, cutting his way through the opposition. 

And ahead of him, the whole time - the beautiful golden glow of that goal.

A glow that starts to move and Shiro roars his:

“No!” Heart in his throat. Driving carelessly forward. So close. He is so close. After so long. He can’t lose now.

He won’t.

Blades of light singe him, he hears the warning thrum inside. Even with Black’s tech virus running through him, he’s pushing close to danger levels. And yet the thrum isn’t a call to hold himself back. Black know exactly what’s at stake too.

Shiro’s scuffed armor cracks across the chestplate, having absorbed too many blasts and it jettisons as it was designed to, keeping it from being an entangling hazard. The way it willexplode once its timer runs out is a new twist. But Shiro will far from that spot by the time it does. 

Ahead of him the transport is pulling away, frantically trying to clear the fueling station before it was programmed to. Shiro pours on a last burst of energy, feels something in his knee give and throws himself over the railing, landing hard on the roof of the cargo section and letting the momentum roll him to the cockpit. His hand fists, glows violet and drives down hard, tearing through the roof of the vehicle and it sears flesh as he catches the driver and rips him, what’s left of him after he’s been forcefully pulled out of the ceiling, upward and over his shoulder. Shiro barely feels the energy bolt that catches his shoulder from a frantic drone shot and then he’s down through the new hole in the roof in the cockpit, landing in the newly vacated pilots seat. His fist ends any protest the frantic co-pilot had been about to make and a second later that body is flying out the side door as Shiro puts his palm against the screen of the transport and Black’s energy pours into it. Everything lights up with familiar purple readings and the engine roars in a way it never had before as Black fills it. The bulky transport suddenly moves as sleek and easily as the most advanced fighter under Shiro’s touch and he simply blasts his way out of the fueling station and then clear through the side of the building, Black pouring on energy shielding to the front of the ship -

and to the cargo in the hold it carries.

Outside is a riot of explosions and darting ships, enemy and friendly and Shiro feels the swell of warm gratitude fill his chest. This isn’t Garrison business. But they’d come through for him to the teeth all the same.

He lets the transport drop like a falling meteor into the gaping canyon of the lanes between the buildings, weaving it between programed vehicle lanes, following the purple that now lit up his windshield. Even with Black’s virus alive and active inside him, repairing as it workes, he knows his body is going to hate him once the adrenaline wears off. Its worth it though. Worth it as the transport disappears into the seedier, darker - safer - depths of the city, out of Galra control and Galra tracking and Shiro can, finally, take a moment to breathe. To look back. To see the cargo he’s fought so hard for and searched so long for through the protective barrier in the back.

Four human sized cryo-pods.

Each with a separate distinct primary color blinking back out of the frozen ice at him in welcome.


End file.
